Despite their apparent directness, Michael Nyman's works often carry a great deal of musical and extra-musical baggage, with connections linking them. The song cycle Acts of Beauty has links with two of Nyman's operas - the overall title and the first text were taken from an Italian Renaissance treatise on how beauty may be quantified, while the second is a text collage by Kurt Schwitters who is the main character in Man and Boy: Dada (2004). Added to that are songs based on the writings of the early documentary film-maker Dziga Vertov and a setting of a Martial epigram about the weighing of a penis that ties in with his continuing sequence of works based on historic writing on sex. It's a rich, eclectic mix that Nyman's settings, and especially soprano Cristina Zavalloni's singing of them, makes coherent. The instrumental work coupled with it is equally unlikely - the 11 brief movements of Exit No Exit for the dour combination of bass clarinet and string quartet started life in Beckham Crosses, Nyman Scores, the piece for John Motson's pre-recorded voice and string quartet that was commissioned by the BBC for the end of the World Cup in 2002, and whose movements were portraits of individual footballers.

The Celan Songs on the second disc are earlier - they were written in 1990 - and in many ways are more conventional than some of his more recent text-based works. Nyman chooses some of Paul Celan's more lyrical, least despairing poems and sets them for a contralto voice (Hilary Summers on the recording). In the 2001 Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi, written to accompany an exhibition by the visual artist Mary Kelly, the soprano Sarah Leonard tells the story of a Kosovan child, found on a battlefield and thought to be a Serb, in declamatory, almost ritualistic melodic lines while the accompanying ensemble pulses beneath her. It's compelling and eloquent, and once again Nyman's word setting is more subtle and suggestive than it seems at first.